USB gave the PC one powered connector and ended the port zoo

By the late 1990s every PC came with a zoo of specialized ports — serial for modems, parallel for printers, PS/2 for keyboard and mouse — each with its own cable, driver dance and reboot ritual. The Universal Serial Bus, launched as USB 1.0 in 1996 by a consortium of computer and telecom companies, replaced them with one flat, powered connector: the same socket was supposed to take the scanner, the microphone and the mouse, and Windows 98 would recognize the device, load the driver and let you work without restarting.

Adoption needed a forcing function, and Apple supplied it. The 1998 iMac shipped with a USB keyboard and mouse and no floppy drive at all — users who wanted floppies had to buy USB ones, and as Simson Garfinkel wrote in the Boston Globe, what looked like a blunder actually jump-started the market, creating 'a class of users that were desperate for the technology.' USB floppy and Zip drives multiplied, revitalizing Apple's third-party suppliers and giving every peripheral maker a reason to go USB.

The PC world lagged by half-measures: vendors added two USB ports to the standard port collection rather than deleting the legacy sockets, since ports were a way to justify margin, not cut cost. Even so, the direction held — USB's core design has stayed the same since 1.0, expanding through faster speeds, stronger power delivery and the reversible USB Type-C connector without ever abandoning the original promise of one socket for everything.

One powered, hot-pluggable connector for all

Combining power and data in one connector eliminated the separate power bricks and cable tangles that made peripherals expensive to own.

Hot-plugging with automatic recognition removed the reboot ritual, which is what made attaching a device feel like using an appliance.

Cross-platform compatibility ended the Mac's second-class peripheral market and doubled every device maker's addressable audience.

Apple's all-in iMac created a desperate installed base overnight, giving third parties the volume to fund a USB-only product line.

A standard wins when it removes a cost incumbents have learned to live with: legacy ports, driver floppies and reboots were the PC's accepted friction — one connector made all three vanish.

The core of USB has remained essentially unchanged since USB 1.0 in 1996 even as it absorbed faster bus speeds, enhanced power delivery, new device classes and the reversible Type-C connector — the port zoo it replaced is now a museum exhibit, and a single cable type charges laptops, phones and drives alike.